


The Space Between Grief And Trust

by borrowedphrases



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Keith Week 2016, Mid-Canon, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2016-09-27
Packaged: 2018-08-18 05:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8151109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borrowedphrases/pseuds/borrowedphrases
Summary: During a restless night, Keith shares memories with Red.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For [keith-week](http://keith-week.tumblr.com/) Day 2: Red Lion

The gentle hum of the Castle is the only sound that accompanies the soft padding of Keith's boots as he wanders the halls. By the Castle's time, which Keith suspects might still be running on the old Altean clock and calendar, it's nighttime, the other inhabitants all tucked away in their bedrooms sleeping. Hopefully sleeping anyway, Keith's not too certain that Shiro gets much sleep these days, and he's beginning to suspect Pidge might actually be a robot that just plugs herself in occasionally to recharge her batteries. He's never even seen her go in or come out of her room, she's usually in one of the hangars, or in the common room tapping away at her laptop.

Keith knows he should be in bed, their schedules kept them waking up early for morning training before breakfast, and then they usually have days filled with drills and exercises, studying Altean combat and tech and language, pouring over what information they've managed to scrounge up about the Galra, reviewing the races they've already brought into their little alliance. All of that required rest, and sleep, and fresh starts. He just can't seem to sleep though, too wired and wound up. It's one of those nights where he feels a prickling sensation all along his spine, from his tailbone all the way up past the nape of his neck. It's a restless sort of itch, one he doesn't know how to get rid of, something he never felt before he became a Paladin.

Usually he retreats to the training deck during nights like these, goes a few rounds with the Gladiator on increasingly harder difficulties until he's so exhausted he can barely make it back to his room before crashing. It's good exercise, and the extra hours training are beginning to pay off. New strength in his limbs, replenishing the weight he lost during his time hermitting in the desert, and his muscle memory during melee combat is getting better too, his stamina growing; he almost beat Shiro in a sparing match the other day, which is definitely something new.

For some reason Keith finds his steps taking him in a different direction than the training deck. Instead of moving up floors, his feet are leading him down, lower in the Castle than he's ever walked before. There are a lot of places in the Castle he's never been before, the place is _huge_ , and it's not like he has a lot of skills outside fighting and flying, like Hunk and Pidge have.

The itch is getting stronger as he goes lower in the Castle, like tiny caterpillars crawling up and down his back. For a moment he slows his steps to a stop, tilting his head and listening. The hum of the Castle isn't any louder here, so it's probably not a sensory response to whatever magical-science energy the Castle runs on. He sighs, scrubs a hand at the back of his hair, and then continues on; his feet seem to know where they want to go, even if his brain hasn't caught up with them just yet.

Keith wonders if this is a similar situation to feeling the presence of Blue in the desert, if his body is just somehow attuned to Altean energy. It's a different sensation, this electric tickle along his spine, but he's in a different place now, and the Castle isn't sentient like the Lions, at least not that he's aware of.

He comes to a door with a strange arrangement of Altean letters glowing softly from it. He recognizes a few of them, but not enough to make sense of the full meaning. The order structure doesn't seem like a sentence anyway, and maybe the ones he doesn't recognize make up a name? Several names? He squints at them a moment longer, then gives a small shrug of his shoulders, turning to head back the way he came.

Only then he feels a great lurch in the pit of his stomach, like someone's tied a string to his navel _through_ him and is pulling him backwards by it. His stomach muscles even tense inward, spasming like they've been hit with an electric pulse, and he staggers briefly before reaching out to steady himself with one hand against the wall.

"Okay." Keith breathes, glancing back at the door. "I guess I'm _not_ going back to bed?"

He reaches for the panel to open the door, wondering if maybe it'll be locked, if he'll need special clearance to get to whatever lies beyond. When he presses his hand to the panel it makes a few faint sounds, then glows with a soft red light. The characters on the door glow the same color, and then the door slides open.

Keith can see Red looming in her hangar even before he steps through the door. She sits on her haunches, back to the door Keith closes behind himself, her face fixed on the massive hangar doors that lead out into space. She looks as if she's keeping vigil, guarding the Castle even with her bay closed, ready and waiting should her Paladin need her. Should Keith need her.

As Keith's feet carry him closer to her, he remembers the first time he saw her on that Galra ship. She was caged, and Keith was so unsure of himself still. He'd listened to what the others had told him about finding their own Lions, and what Shiro has said about patience, but he still felt like maybe it wouldn't work for him, maybe the Princess had been wrong about him, maybe he'd flunk out of this two before even getting a chance to fly. When he hit that panel that opened the docking bay doors, flushing his enemies out into space, he hadn't been thinking about earning Red's approval. He'd acted on pure instinct, saw the fasted way to solve his immediate problem, and then tried to deal with the consequences in his own way - and if those consequences ended up being dying adrift in space, well, so be it.

During those agonizingly long moments of floating weightless from the ship, when Red came into view, looming over him, her great maw opening to receive him, he thought she was the most beautiful thing in all the universe. He felt it then, deep in his core and glowing white hot. Her approval, her acceptance. He felt the thrum of her purr as if it were coming from within his own chest. She caught him in her muzzle, welcomed him into her pilot seat, and he'd been so moved, so touched, the only thing he could manage to get out was a pathetic _good kitty_.

She's laughed at him later about that, as much as giant sentient space robot Lions can laugh. Like a clicking rumble in the back of her throat that resonated only inside his own head. He always got the feeling she was kindly patronizing him, and he knew it wasn't so much that he controlled her when they flew together, but that she allowed him to sit in her chair, to work _with her_.

Keith circles around to the front of her now, head tipped back so he can gaze up at her underbelly, the slope of her throat, the bottom of her muzzle. The itch that was worrying at his back is now just a warm sensation of heat, like lying in a patch of sunlight streaming in through a window, and it grows warmer as he nears one of her massive front paws.

"Hey, Red." Keith reaches out to press his palm flat against the side of one of her huge claws - _toe beans_ Hunk had cooed once at Yellow about them, though Keith was pretty sure that was an entirely different part of a cat's paw. "Did you want to see me?"

There came a low rumble, more felt inside him than heard. Softer and more gentle than the roars she let loose during battle, than the excited growling she expressed when they were flying at top speed together. This felt more like affection than elation or aggression, and it felt like it was aimed at him.

Keith takes a few steps back, not wanting to get crushed or knocked over in case she needed to shift. "Can I come up?"

Red didn't respond in feeling this time. She stood up from her haunches, and then settled down into a four legged crouch, her head coming down to rest between her paws and her mouth opening, the little ramp - _blep_ , Lance called it - extending for him.

Red's cockpit always felt warm to him. Gently so, not the dry burn of the desert, more like sitting just at that perfect distance from a campfire, where your front isn't too hot and your back isn't too cold. He runs his fingers along the panels, not at all fussed that they don't activate from his touch - he's not here to take her on a flight, after all - and then moves to settle comfortably into the pilot chair.

He runs his hands along the arm rests, chuckling softly when he feels Red purr in his mind. She feels sleepy, which is a weird thought, it's not like she's low on energy or damaged. Maybe the Lions needed sleep just as much as they did. Maybe all sentient minds needed to power down from time to time, just to stay somewhat sane. "You tired?"

A affirmative sensation, and Keith, without thinking, reaches back behind the headrest of his chair to scritch the back of it, like he's scritching at Red. He's deeply glad, for both their sakes, that no one else is around right now. Red seems to enjoy the action, but feels like she's just as pleased that they're alone.

"I'm pretty tired too." Keith sighs, drawing his hand back to the armrest and leaning back in the chair, tipping his head so he's gazing up at the ceiling. "But _somebody's_ been keeping me up, it seems."

For a moment there's nothing, then the feeling of sheepishness, not quite an apology, but the closest he thinks Red will ever give to one, and honestly he never expected even that much. 

"Hey, it's okay." Keith glides his palms along the armrests, smiling softly. "I don't mind being here with you, just wish I knew I could get to you without having to go through the whole song and dance from the command room and alerting everybody else about it."

Red purrs softly within him, and a bit without as well, he can feel a low vibration coming from his chair. It's really soothing, and he falls into a comfortable silence with his Lion for a while. He even closes his eyes, dozing lightly, though not quite falling fully asleep. Which is probably for the best, he's not sure he'd hear Shiro's wake up call from in here if he accidentally ended up spending the night.

Then there's a flicker of something. It's faint, like Red doesn't quite want to be sharing it with him, but it's there, and the longer Keith sits with Red, open to her, in tune with her, the more he feels it. It's raw, and hollow, and _old_ , and Keith knows what it is immediately, knows it intimately as if it were his own emotion.

And for a long time, it was.

"You lonely?" Keith's eyes don't open, he doesn't need them too. "No, that's not quite it. Not lonely; you're not alone. You miss someone though."

_Grief._

The moment Keith thinks that word, he feels like a sinkhole is opening up within him, a damn breaking, a volcano erupting. It's not his emotions, it's hers. Deep and powerful and _vulnerable_. Behind his closed eyelids he sees a planet he's only seen in pictures, tiny ones on blue tinted datatabs, too small to get many of the details. But here, in his mind, he sees it in all its former glory. A deep blue, deeper than Earth's, with city structures reaching up up _up_ high above the planet's atmosphere, two great artifical rings circling the planet, ships hovering, coming and going, commerce and diplomacy... but also newly minted warships, something Red does not care for, something she wishes were unnecessary.

He's seeing all this with Red's eyes, seeing Altea as she did, back over ten thousand years ago. Back when the war was young, when Red and her siblings were new. He floats just outside the atmosphere, tail swirling behind him, nimble body maneuvering about between much slower ships. He catches a glimpse of his twin and emits a burst to be nearer to her, pouncing at her, their claws entwining as they somersault through the sky. He feels raw, unhindered joy.

He and his twin move to rendezvous with their older sisters, already waiting for them on the landing deck of the larger of the two rings. The four rush to meet up with the oldest of them, the one that came before, they one they were modeled off of, the one they were designed to complement and enhance. He has never know what it was like to have a mother, but as the four greet the one he gets a sensation that this is close to what that bond is like.

They Lions settle as the small ones draw closer, and he is the last to sit back on his haunches, the last to adopt a calm posture. Four unknown small ones are in the mix, four fresh suits of armor shining brilliant and new. His siblings greet their counterparts for the first time in their own ways. Playfulness. Kindness. Inquisitiveness. 

He is hesitant, cautious, unmoving at first, until the small one lifts its hand, palm up, and smiles. He moves closer, and he feels it, feels their mind touch his as he leans forward and down, as their hand brushes against the bottom of his muzzle. This time the purr is his, shared with the small one. This time he understands exactly what it means when that happens.

The one, waiting patiently behind them with her small one stands from her crouch, lifts her head high, and roars proudly over her newly minted pride. 

_You trusted them so quickly._

Keith knows he shouldn't feel bitter about that, and he tries to squash it down. 

Then he's flying again, in a different place, a bad place, desperation coursing through his circuits and his small one's veins. He does not want this. He does not want to run. But the one had commanded the four to flee, and his small one was badly injured, their charge fading faster than usual. He is undamaged, he can fight, they all can still fight, they should stay and fight.

He feels his small one's thoughts mingled with his own. They try to sooth him, calm his outrage and frustration. Where they are going he does not know, but they know, and so he trusts, he lets them guide, he lets them take complete control. He is losing his connection with his sisters, as he lost his connection with the one when she was shut away. They and their small ones are each slowly fading from his mind, being guided away away _away_ amoung the stars. 

The planet comes into view like beacon, red and barren looking, but this is where his small one is guiding them, and so he goes. He trusts them, they have never steered him wrong before, through countless battles and to a hundred different worlds.

He should not have trusted them.

The ground is cracked and hot, steam rises from vents in the split rocks, smoke plumes in the air, rising from bubbling geysers of molten rock. It is not entirely deadly, there is air for his small one to breathe, but there is virtually no life, no food, no way for them to recharge. He tries to leave immediately, tries to ascend back into space, but his small one will not let him. They won't allow him to move. He could, he could override them, but he still trusts.

His small one tumbles from his mouth onto the violent planet, and there is red on their lips to match the rocks. He knows this is not okay, that this is a bad thing, but he does not know what to do beyond rumbling deep worry into them, to share his fears with them.

They say they are alright, and that this is for the best. He begs for them to climb back inside, it is not safe here, it is not home. His small one smiles, their tiny eyes leaking more fluid. 

Trust me, they say, and they put their hand on his muzzle, rub a slow circle, and then move to lean back against it. He can feel their ragged breathing both against his jaw and inside his own self. 

Just let me catch my breath, my friend, they say. He rumbles low, and the particle barrier flickers to life around him and his small one, shielding them both from the more harsh elements of the planet. 

Moments pass in silence, until he feels their heart grow unsteady. He purrs, not pleased, but trying to comfort, trying to sooth, trying to heal. His small one tips their head back against his muzzle, eyes closing. 

You'll be safe here, they say.

And then they say no more.

Keith's eyes slowly blink open again, and he's not at all startled to find heavy tracks of tears on his cheeks. He still feels like crying, the grief from Red so powerfully linked into him that he feels it as if he was there, as if it were his own in the most personal way. He draws in a few deep, shaking breaths, trying to calm the ache in his heart, the one that he's sharing with Red.

"You loved them."

Red hums within him, sad and mournful. Keith not sure how exactly the link between them works, but he tries to share with Red the way she just shared with him. It's not nearly as detailed and elaborate as her memories were in his mind just now, but he does what he can.

He shows her a time when he was lost in his own grief, so she can see what he was seeing then. She sees the blanket of the night sky outside a window, feels the chill of the desert closing in around her, bleeding in through the slight gaps between heavy blanket and scratchy sheets. She hears the mournful sounds of a crying coyote echoing off the cliffs in the distance.

She clutches a shirt in her hands, the one thing she has left of the only person that ever felt like family. Her dearest friend. Dead. Lost on a distant moon and never coming back, even though he promised, he _promised_ he would come back to her. She sobs into her pillow, curling more fully into a ball as she draws her knees up against her chest.

The pillow smells like moldy down and sweat and drool and tears, and she pulls her face away from it, instead pressing her nose into the shirt, breathing in deeply. She's trying to catch his scent, but it's been too long now, it smells only like fabric to her nose, and she chokes out a sob into it, her heart breaking fresh and new.

There is a murmured understanding from her after Keith closes the memory, and then she flashes an image in his mind. From her point of view he sees Shiro standing beside him, laughing, smiling, resting a hand on the shoulder of Keith's armor. He feels a sensation as if she's butting the top of her head up beneath his hand, nosing at him, questioning as much as she's encouraging.

"Yeah." Keith says, sniffling and wiping his face on his sleeve. "I know. I got mine back. It's not the same."

A flash of something like anger, but not quite. Frustration, he realizes a moment later. Frustration with him not fully understanding.

She shows him a flash of their first meeting from her perspective. This new small one, him, trying to reach her even though she's closed herself off from small ones so many millennia ago. But when he opens the hatch, when his little fragile body goes tumbling out into space, she feels a stab of desperation, leaping out into the void to catch him in her jaws. She will not lose another one, she will not have another small one leave her in death.

"Oh." Keith blinks, then looks around the cabin, at the control panels and view screens, the handles he pilots with, the steady floor beneath his feet, and the comfortable arms of the chair he sits in. 

She purrs, deep with him, and through her own body. The chair beneath him vibrates again, and he smiles, sliding his palms along the armrests. He smiles, and tips his head back, nuzzling at the headrest. "You know I can't sleep in here."

There's a grumble of a protest, and he suspects that clicking sound he just heard was her locking him out of the controls to open her hatch.

"Red, I'm serious." He's amused, but stern, glaring fondly up at the ceiling, wishing he could meet her eyes, though it's kind of moot when their minds are connected. "I'll be a useless mess of knots tomorrow if I sleep in this chair. I need my bed, and I need you to actually let me sleep in it."

A sensation of puffed air, like a huffing sigh, and then he hears the click again, followed by her maw opening. Keith pushes himself out of her chair with a groan, stretching a bit before walking to the hatch and down then ramp back into the hangar. 

Outside he turns to watch her stretch her legs, then sit up again, and settle back on her haunches, paws kneading a bit in front of her before going still on the floor. Keith makes a point to walk close to one of them on his way back to the door, rubbing at the red metal. "Good kitty."

The last sensation he feels from her before their connection fades to a low background hum is that of flicking ears and the soft padding of feet moving steadily away.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head I was picturing Red's first Paladin as a woman, but I went with neutral pronouns so anyone could image them whatever gender expression they like.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://borrowedphrases.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/borrowedphrases)


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